Obtaining prescription drugs and other therapeutic medical materials can require considerable time and effort on the part of the patient. In a typical scenario, the patient must obtain a written prescription from a physician or other licensed healthcare professional, take the written prescription to a registered pharmacist, then wait while the materials are prepared. While a pharmacist counts pills, checks for drug interactions, or even phones the physician or insurance carrier, the patient waits. For sick or elderly patients, travel to and waiting at the drugstore can be onerous.
In recent years, various plans have been proposed to address the problems encountered by patients in obtaining prescription materials. Prescription “vending machines” have been proposed, whereby a patient enters prescription information into a dispensing machine remote from a physician's office, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,801 to Rosenblum. While this approach may be appropriate in certain environments and for certain pharmaceuticals, inherently dangerous drugs such as prescription narcotics are ill suited for dispensing from a publicly accessible vending machine. An alternative system that attempts to facilitate dispensing of prescription drugs is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,370 to Walker et al., hereby incorporated by reference. In Walker '370, a system is described wherein a bar coded prescription may be printed, given to a patient, and later filled at a pharmacy. Although Walker '370 may facilitate certain aspects of obtaining prescription drugs, the Walker '370 system requires computer entry of the information by someone other than the patient, for example, a healthcare professional.
Physicians write approximately 2.5 billion prescriptions a year, only about 1% of prescriptions are transmitted electronically because of security issues and viability solutions. Approximately 40% of all written drug prescriptions require rework by pharmacies. Adverse drug events (ADE) have caused 20% of the deaths in hospitals in 1999. ADE's are known to decline when physicians electronically prescribe medication, however, the time required by physicians in entering prescriptions is costly and time consuming. Moreover, the writing of prescriptions by unauthorized persons continues to be a problem as the current systems are easily duplicated. These shortcomings have contributed to rising health care and drug prescription costs.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,255, issued to Mayaud, hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a wirelessly deployable, computerized prescription management system consisting of creating electronic prescriptions accordance with patient-condition objectives, patient record assembly, privacy/security passwords and numeric codes for identifying patients and doctors, online access to comprehensive drug information and onscreen physician-to-pharmacy and physician-to-physician e-mail.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,493,427 to Kobylevsky et al., hereby incorporated by reference, provides a remote prescription refill system. Kobylevsky discloses one method of facilitating prescription delivery, but is limited to refills.